Four boys, their mom, and her cello . . . and now a little sister!

Weekly Report 14

November 14, 2009

We had another good week, but I’m about ready for some time off. One more week to get through before we break for Thanksgiving and D’s birthday. This week was exciting in that we’re this close to finishing both A’s Singapore Math 3A book (which I never thought we’d see the end of!) and his Writing with Ease book 2. Finishing those off will be so satisfying next week.

Today we woke up to snow and the boys went outside to have a snowball fight. I’m sure that was the highlight of the week for them, although we also had fun with a family game night on Tuesday since I didn’t have orchestra rehearsal. We went to the city cemetery to lay flowers for Veteran’s Day and I took the boys out to Noodles and Co. for dinner on Wednesday after DH informed me he wouldn’t be home until late. We ended up at Barnes and Noble to look at books and play with their train setup after dinner. C told me thank you for helping him have such a fun night. It was fun for me too. I can get so caught up in what is on the calendar that needs to be done, that I forget to be spontaneous and just do fun things on a whim once in a while.

As for actual schoolwork, we were pretty productive this week:

History and Literature: We read SOTW chapter 13 about King Louis XIV and chapter 14 about Frederick I and Prussia. We’re not in a project mood lately so the boys just did the mapwork for both chapters and we read a lot of books about France and several picture book adaptations of Grimm fairy tales. We have a volume of the complete Grimm’s fairy tales, but they’re rather…grim. We prefer the picture book versions. We also watched a short geography video about Germany.

The boys were interested by the elaborateness and excess of the French court in The Emperor’s Day by Aliki. If my printer hadn’t run out of colored ink, I had intended to print out these fabulous Louis XIV paper dolls I found. We did look at some pictures of Versailles and other French castles in some of our National Geographic books.

I especially loved The Water of Life. Trina Schart Hyman is fast becoming one of my favorite children’s book illustrators.

Memory Work: Finished memorizing 2 Nephi 9: 28-29:

28 O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish.
29 But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.

Science: We finished main group metals and learned about bismuth, which is in Pepto-BISmol and makeup, among other things. We also boiled cabbage for the juice which we used as an indicator of acids and bases in lemon juice, orange juice, milk, soap, vinegar, Windex, and egg whites. Our original experiment didn’t work out so well. We were supposed to add cabbage juice to lemon juice and then add baking soda to neutralize the acid. We never did get it neutralized completely, but the boys thought the resulting fizz was really cool.

D (Preschool)Math: Did a few pages from Miquon with number lines and patternsLetters: After writing the numbers from 0-99 last week, he decided to turn back to letters and traced all the letters from K to Z, mostly in one day. He’s also decided that if I’m making his brothers write the date on every paper, then he can put the date on his papers as well.FIAR: We began rowing Cranberry Thanksgiving and will finish it up next week.

C (1st grade)
Math: Miquon math beginning subtraction with Cuisenaire rodsReading: C finished reading The Roundhill and The Invisible Dog by Dick King-Smith and began Pippi Longstocking. Grammar: 3 lessons on nouns that name thingsWriting with Ease 1: 4 lessons from week 13 on The Saturdays

A (3rd grade)
Math: 3 reviews and exercise 45Spelling: no spelling this weekGrammar: 3 lessons on making nouns possessiveWriting with Ease 2: 4 lessons from weeks 34 and 35 on Doctor DolittleLatin: Began lesson 6 and starting learning “Adeste Fideles”Independent Reading: He finally finished From the Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and is now finishing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.